A growth in metabolic syndrome (hereinafter, referred simply to as “MS”) has become a social problem. In Japan, “visceral fat type obesity” is a mandatory field for determination of the MS. A determining method using visceral fat area obtained by computed tomography (hereinafter, referred simply to as “CT”) or a circumference of the waist as a reference of the visceral fat type obesity has been proposed. Only limited facilities may conduct the CT. The visceral fat type obesity is determined with reference to the circumference of the waist. However, the determination on the visceral fat type obesity with reference to the circumference of the waist has room for improvement in accuracy.
As such, quantification of the visceral fat area without using the CT has been attempted. Patent Document 1 discloses a visceral fat measuring apparatus that may operate an abdominal morphometric unit, which is a combination of an encoder for measuring a distance and an angular velocity meter, along a periphery of the abdomen and thereby obtain a two-dimensional shape of the abdomen from a measured value. That is, from an abdominal area obtained from the two-dimensional shape of the abdomen and a subcutaneous fat distribution measured by an ultrasonic apparatus, a visceral fat amount is measured.
Also, Non-Patent Document 1 discloses a method of measuring a three-dimensional shape of the abdomen by using two range finders and estimating the visceral fat area from an abdominal cross-sectional shape at a navel position.